The first machines merely loosened, but did not raise the stuff, a scouring being afterwards effected by means of sluices. These machines consisted of large bars or prongs placed vertically in a frame, and being fastened to a barge placed in the line of the sluices, the whole was inpelled forward by the current, thereby scouring the bed. Such a machine, called a hedgehog, is still used in Lincolnshire.

All around were styrofoam cups hedgehogged with butts, and the threebar electric heater was encrusted with bits of charcoaled tobacco and frazzled stands of hair where people had stooped down to spark up.

The walls were pockmarked with fragments of stone and hedgehogged with jagged daggers of glass, while in the street below there were sickening splodges on the pavement which a workman was covering with sawdust.

I think they're from different faculties,” I reply, taking a step back to peruse the table filled with assorted snacks, my hand hovering over the hedgehogged tray of cheese and pineapple cocktail sticks.